


Hunters.

by janboy



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 14:04:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13296435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janboy/pseuds/janboy
Summary: Geralt pursues the trail of a mysterious murder in the Velen countryside.





	Hunters.

A single chair was placed in the center of the house. All other furniture was pushed against the walls or thrown outside. The house itself was the same design as the numerous peasant shacks that littered the Velen countryside. One room; a boiling pot, a bedroll, a few boxes for clothes and other belongings, maybe a window.

Geralt stood in the doorway. The newly-made widow was some paces behind him, sobbing. Her hands covered her face in a weak attempt at stifling her noise, or to hide her eyes from the corpse that sat on that lone chair. He didn’t give her a second glance or words of comfort, that wasn’t his business, instead he stepped into the house and closed the door behind him. It was quiet now. The wind continued to howl against the walls of the home, but its noise was subdued, low enough for Geralt to tune it out entirely. He took another step forward, and his boot made a small splash in a puddle of blood.

“Quite the presentation.” He said to himself. 

It was exactly that. A presentation… and a message. Geralt leaned down slightly and analyzed the corpse. 

“Torn in two, vertically,” he reached forward and pressed a gloved finger against the man’s exposed throat. Blood coated Geralt’s index finger and he brought it to his nose. 

“Still fresh. Couldn’t have been more than a few hours ago.” 

Herron Rapp was the man’s name. Helen Rapp was outside. Geralt’s questioning of Helen moments before she led him here was pointless, she was a mess. But, she did repeatedly insult Herron. ‘Fool’ and ‘wouldn’t listen’. He would have to push that later. His eyes trailed down towards Herron’s open stomach. Split open like a cornucopia. Guts, intestines, shredded lungs, spilling out from the flaps of his stomach skin on either side and dropping to the wooden boards beneath his feet. 

Missing heart, though, and no liver. 

“Claws and teeth, skin torn in jagged patterns…” 

Geralt stepped back and ran his eyes over his surroundings. Some of the furniture was damaged, but only from the force of it being slammed or pushed against the walls. There was no telltale signs of a struggle. Herron was taken and overpowered immediately. One arm folded over the other and Geralt sighed. A ghoul wasn’t intelligent enough to do this. No, it had to be something else. It was in a closer inspection of Herron’s open stomach that Geralt saw something. It was a brief glimmer, something only spotted because of his enhanced vision. There, embedded into Herron’s spine, was a tooth. Geralt lowered himself to a knee beside the chair and he shoved his hands into the grotesque and mangled organs without hesitation. Blood spilled over his arm with his intrusion, painting webs of red along his shoulder. His fingers wrapped around the tooth and he tugged it free. 

It was sizable. Curved like a dagger, and as long as Geralt’s middle-finger. He wiped some of the blood from it, and noticed the change in coloration from the top of the tooth and down towards the sharp point. A change that only came from a human transforming into a werewolf, and the wicked teeth that grew to this size.

A lycanthrope, werewolf.

His fingers wrapped about the tooth and he slid it into his pocket. Geralt rose to his feet and started his search for clues again, this time with his realization in mind. He pushed aside crates and furniture, looking for a trail the werewolf could’ve left behind, and he found it in the door hinge. His nose twitched, a faint scent brought him from the upturned table and back towards the door. Caught in the rusted iron hinge was a tuft of charcoal-black fur. He picked it free and inspected it closely. Taking into account the color, and taking a deep inhale of the scent. After a moment, Geralt placed the fur into his pocket as well and opened the door. 

Helen flinched at Geralt’s appearance. She was still shaking, nose running freely and hands holding either arm. Her back was bent forward. She looked small. 

Geralt closed the door quickly behind him before she could see her husband again and he approached.

“Did Herron have any enemies in town?”

Helen gulped. She rose a hand to wipe a tear from her face and still refused to meet Geralt’s gaze. 

“N-no, he was an honest man, h-h-he just w-worked the fields and minded his own.” 

Geralt crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes. She was lying. He could tell. He rose one of his hands so that his palm was towards Helen, and he whispered, “Axii.”

A quick flash of white light leapt from his fingertips. They formed a small triangle in his palm, then it rose forward from his glove and dissipated in the air. After a moment, a clarity entered Helen’s eyes that probably hadn’t been there since before the war. A thin but bright line of white lined her irises, and she spoke firmly.

“That bastard! I told ‘im just keep your head down and don’t go talkin’ to the Black Ones. Those resistance fighters are watchin’ everyone in the village.”

Resistance? Geralt blinked, “What resistance?”

“Some no-good group of boys who attack anyone who goes and tries to help the Black Ones. Breaks into their homes, burns their fields… Herron said he would go an’ ask those damn Black Ones about more work so we can get more coin to start a family, but--”

“The resistance caught wind.”

Helen sniffled and looked down, “They must’ve.”

“Unless they’ve got a werewolf on a leash, that means that the one who did this is one of them. Where are they?”

“If everyone jus’ knew where they were, the Black Ones would just take care of them already. But sometimes the men in the village gather at the inn.” 

Geralt nodded. He rose his hand again and that small flash of white returned for a moment, and went out again. The white that lined Helen’s eyes also disappeared, and she rose both her hands to her head as though she had a headache. She probably did, a common occurrence after an Axii cast. When Helen slowly rose her head, all Geralt gave her was a nod before turning and walking towards the center of town. 

The inn was moderately packed for such a somber time. Battlefields were only a handful of minutes away, corpses decaying and being eaten by ghouls, and yet people still came to the tavern to eat and drink. Displaced villagers made good customers, it seemed, war was good for business. 

Some heads turned with his entry. Whispers and hushed words filled the air, all conversations that Geralt’s ears could hone in on. Nothing of interest, though, nothing that led him to his quarry. Simply the odd comments about his two swords, his eyes. Murmurs of freak, mutant, Witcher. After that brief pause, normal conversation resumed again. Geralt slowly walked towards the innkeep. To the untrained eye, Geralt looked honed in on speaking with the woman behind the counter. But he was scoping the patrons, his peripherals and subtle eye movements, snapping from left to right. He took special note of a full table of men in the far corner of the inn. All roughly the same age, 30s, 40s, even from the center of the tavern Geralt could smell the scent of the woods coming from them. Indescript leathers on their bodies, some with large knives at their hips. 

Geralt made eye contact with the innkeep as he approached, and the woman nodded at him. 

“What can I get you, Sir Witcher.” 

“Glass of vodka.” 

She nodded, and Geralt withdrew a coin from his pouch. She placed his glass on the counter, and Geralt slid her the payment. He downed the vodka in a single swig before he placed the glass on the counter and walked towards the table of men. 

There was no stealth in his approach. Only a deliberate and slow stride. There was a lot Geralt had to do in those moments. His eyes jumped from one man to the next, looking at their hair. Too dark, too light, could be, could be. Geralt took another step forward, another insult thrown at him from the table and another mug was slammed down in warning. He ignored it all. Two of them have charcoal hair, I need scent, I need to get closer.   
“Oi! Witchfucker, yer daft? We don’ want none of your kind sourin’ the taste of our drinks, so fuck off.” 

A chorus of hoots of approval rang about the gathered men, eight in total. Geralt finally stopped his approach two feet away from the table, and his eyes rested on the first of the two men who bore hair resembling the fur he found. He was seated against the wall, slouching, but a tight grip about the handle of his mug. They made eye-contact and held it, then the man broke the gaze. Geralt inhaled through his nostrils, not him.

“You dumb? Can’t talk? Maybe this freak ain’ even got a tongue!”

The second man was closer. He sat on the near row of seats, his head was turned over his shoulder and he met Geralt’s gaze unblinking. There was no fear in his gaze, there was something else. Anticipation. This time, Geralt broke the eye-lock and looked at the man’s hands. Uncut nails, dark clots at the bases, angular shaped. 

Geralt breathed in deeply, and this time the smell was familiar. 

Before any of those seated could draw their weapons, rise from their seats, or even shout, Geralt’s silver sword shined in the tavern’s torchlight as he drew his blade. Steel ringed against sheath, and his wrist twirled to extend it point-forward, straight into the seated man’s back. Geralt buried his sword into the man’s back. He heard the man shriek, and he pushed it further, to the hilt. The silver-blade burst forth through his chest and cracked into the wooden table, and all those gathered around him recoiled and shouted at the top of their lungs.

“HE KILLED HIM!”

“WITCHER KILLED HIM!”

Geralt still had both his hands on his sword. He twisted and turned the blade while it was embedded into the man, each movement only causing his screaming and flailing to grow more frantic. Just as the other resistance fighters found the will to attack, an inhuman roar shook the very walls of the tavern. 

The skewered man’s head snapped back and his leather helmet fell to the ground. The hair on his head grew exponentially, into a mane. The skin on his face changed from rapidly paling to thick patches of charcoal-black fur bursting forth from his pores. His nose grew elongated, canines warped and massive spilled forth from his lips into a sharp curve, and both his arms rose and extended outwards. His wrists snapped, claws and fur covered his hands and grew into paws. 

But his full transformation was cut short.

Geralt turned his body so that his back was against the man’s back, and his sword handle was just above his shoulder. Crouched, and with both hands still wrapped about his blade, Geralt pushed upwards with all the strength he had in his legs.  
It was a fountain of blood. Bursting from the two halves of the werewolf’s head, bits of bone and flesh, globs of brain matter and one of his eyes fell out of place and onto the ground. Blood doused the back of Geralt’s hair, and his eyes blinked open to find all the patrons of the inn staring at him, aghast. The resistance fighters were frozen in place, some not registering the crimson that coated their bodies. 

The Witcher wiped both sides of his silver sword on the back of the dead man’s jerkin before sheathing it. He met the gazes of the silent resistance fighters, and he snorted. 

“Looks like the freak was one of you all this time.”


End file.
